1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates in general to the telecommunications field and, in particular, to a transceiver system that includes multiple radio base stations (RBSs) that can share an antenna even if the RBSs share a frequency band and/or even if the RBSs operate with different radio standards.
2. Description of Related Art
It is well known when an operator places two or more RBSs in a transceiver system or adds a new RBS to the transceiver system that the operator would like to have the RBSs share the same antenna system. An example of a traditional transceiver system with multiple RBSs that share the same antenna is briefly discussed below with respect to FIG. 1.
Referring to FIG. 1 (PRIOR ART), there is shown a block diagram of a traditional transceiver system 100 described in PCT Patent Application No. WO 92/12579. The traditional transceiver system 100 includes several base stations (BS1, BS2, BS3 . . . BSn) each of which can belong to a different type of radio system such as TACS, ETACS and GSM. The base stations (BS1, BS2, BS3 . . . BSn) are connected to a filter means 102 which in turn is connected to an antenna 104. The filter means 102 filters the TX signals that are sent over TX cables 106 from the base stations (BS1, BS2, BS3 . . . BSn) and applies the filtered TX signals to the antenna 104. The filter means 102 also filters RX signals received by the antenna 104. The filtered RX signals are then sent to a divider unit 108. The divider unit 108 divides the filtered RX signals so that separate filtered RX signals can be sent over RX cables 110 to the base stations (BS1, BS2, BS3 . . . BSn). A drawback of this particular transceiver system 100 is that each base station (BS1, BS2, BS3 . . . BSn) needs to use two cables—TX cable 106 and RX cable 110—to share the antenna 104 which adds to the complexity and cost of the transceiver system 100. It should be noted that U.S. Pat. No. 5,781,865 discloses a transceiver system that is similar to and has the same drawbacks as transceiver system 100. Accordingly, there is a need for a transceiver system that addresses and solves the aforementioned drawback associated with the traditional transceiver system 100. This need and other needs are addressed by the transceiver systems of the present invention.